International & Transcultural Studies

The Faculty of the International & Transcultural Studies Department congratulate our students who have been awarded the ITS Summer 2017 Research Grant:

Jihae (Jay) Cha will conduct her pilot study in Kalobeyei Settlement, located in the northwestern part of Kenya with the aim of discovering the role of education - particularly teachers - in fostering social cohesion between refugee students and Kenyan nationals.

Darlene Dubuisson’s project is on the reintegration of Haiti's academic diaspora returnees and the cultural tensions that arise as these returnees seek to transfer the knowledge and skills they gained while abroad.

Amanda Earl’s research will take her to three states and three Intercultural Universities (IUs) in Mexico, to study how the policies supporting the creation of IUs, which are state-supported institutions of higher education targeted toward Indigenous communities, are being translated through implementation and practice to affect the experiences of the faculty and students who work at and attend them.

Cody Freeman will be collecting the school experiences of LGBTQI youth in Western Europe (Belgium, Iceland, Italy, Malta, Portugal) to advocate for a safer, more inclusive school climate.

Miranda Hansen-Hunt will be conducting research at a charter school in Washington DC focusing on how classroom management practices are created and enacted.

Laura Hones will be conducting an ethnographic study at a rural high school in the Midwest, aimed at understanding how humanities teachers in majority-white schools interpret and react to the discourse of cultural diversity found in state-sponsored teaching standards.

Omar Kallon will be conducting a qualitative study involving refugees to depict their challenges and expectations in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they reside.

Corinne Kentor’s project will draw on insights from sociology, linguistics, and legal anthropology, exploring how undocumented parents in southern California form school-based advocacy communities in response to narratives of illegality and illegitimacy prompted by discriminatory immigration policies that target U.S.-based Latinx individuals.

Doo Rhee Lee’s research seeks to understand how the role of languages perceived by the Muslim college students in Indonesia reflects today’s Indonesian society and how it affects their identity as citizens of the world’s largest Muslim country.

Samyukta Lakshman’s research examines how non-commercial, community-operated radio stations are a form of communication and public pedagogy for grassroots communities in India, and looks at how this medium broadcasts information via non-standard languages to listeners who have limited access to mobile or Internet connectivity.

Ji Liu’s dissertation research draws on occupational choice theory in labor economics to understand how shifts in sectoral wage characteristics influence the quality and supply of teachers, and its relevant consequences on student learning, in a large developing country - China.

Kyle Long’s dissertation research explores how the independent, self-identifying 'American' university abroad emerged as a rationalized model of higher education institutions.